I'm willing to accept a little bit of obtrusiveness from a DRM scheme, provided that scheme actually works. That's the root of my objection to DRM in general. I wouldn't be all that opposed to these constant connection schemes if they really did prevent piracy. But they don't, and until they do, I won't think twice about any game that uses them. Of course, that's pretty unlikely, so better to just drop it entirely.

I would find this much more interesting than their other theaters, if only because, being a Westerner, all that stuff is so old-hat. I don't know much about feudal Japan except that they had Samurais and Ninjas and other cool stuff. It's just more exotic and interesting from my perspective.

Beta 3/3 was released some months ago. However, today 1.1 Final release candidates popped up in a few places (that's probably what the download links are to), and those are probably what caused the attention. These may in fact be the actual final 1.1 release and not just RCs, but communication is a little sketchy. At any rate, it's newer than beta 3/3.

Oh, and it's great to see this. The 1.1 series were a huge improvement and finally made NKP what it should have been in the first place. The betas all had pretty serious bugs in them though of one type or another, so the final is most welcome. It really is a brilliant sim at its core.

I never really did with all of the ire directed against the concept. I don't think games are necessarily any different from film or novels, and if done properly can be used for serious subjects to great effect. I mean, if you can look far enough into the future (imagine, say, something like the holodeck in Star Trek), can you imagine any more effective way to communicate the tragedy of war? The limits of current technology do make all games a little cartoony to a certain extent, but I think this is a creative avenue that has the potential to rival if far surpass writing and film.

I think it's an interesting idea, and the subject matter should certainly be treated with respect, lest they just appear to be cashing in on real life tragedies, but at the same time Hollywood does this quite blatantly all the time (people certainly got rich off of Shindler's List, for instance), and people don't get so up in arms about it. Many people even appreciate it and admire it, in fact.

It just depends on how they do it really. If it's just an everyday war shooter, trading on the emotional impact of the events at Fallujah and the Streisand effect, then that will certainly be tasteless, but that remains to be seen.

To me, what HL2 lacked wasn't really horror so much as it was mystery. HL1 had a great combination of mystery, action and exploration. In that sense, the franchise is spent, at least as far as recapturing the feeling of the first one is concerned.

I'd like to see them take the same basic concept as the first one, and start over with a new IP. I think this could work pretty well. I would say that 75% of what made HL1 great (and most all of what made HL2 good) had nothing to do with the concept, but Valve's skill at execution.

The all time top 10's list link is one of the better ones I've seen. Everything there is either an all-time-favorite or something I have to grudgingly accept.

The keep going on about the physics engine in Half Life, though, and I really don't recall it having anything out of the ordinary in that regard. I may just not remember it properly though.

What it had that made it special was complex scripted events that worked the plot right into the game-play and a contiguous environment so there was no missing time. You were Gordon, you didn't just take control of him from time to time (making him have no dialog, for instance, was brilliant). It took immersion to an entirely different level.

SpectralMeat wrote on Mar 17, 2010, 11:00:In that stealth video 2 enemies standing beside the fire, one drops dead the other one just stands there not even making a move while the player lines up the second shot. Then the second one gets killed and the 3rd guy just walks by these 2.

Wow, yeah. That is amazingly weak. That's in a trailer showing off stealth kills?! That has historically been one of the most obvious flaws with AI in stealth games going back years and years. It's the strangest thing. You'd think it wouldn't be all that hard to to add some code to check for and alert nearby friends of an enemy that is killed.

To be fair, immersion wrecking as it is, from a gameplay perspective it's much preferable to unrealistic awareness in AI. I look forward to the day when you can approach AI just using intuitive understanding of how real people behave rather than figuring out whatever crude algorithm the AI follow.

We desperately need more advancement in AI. If some developer could create truly convincing AI, that one feature would make a game that was mediocre in all other aspects an instant classic. I imagine it's much more difficult in practice than it seems, but I would be more than happy to give up all of the enhancements in graphics from the last two or three years if that processing power went towards advanced AI in a new game.

I'd forgotten about that. It was always so relaxing sitting back and watching the replay after a mission. They did an excellent job with the character animations.

zirik wrote on Mar 10, 2010, 10:10:i loved the first ghost recon. it is still one of my favorite military games. i loved the replay feature that you can share with friends. i used it to study what went right or wrong in a mission. whats cool is that it played it back in real time using the games graphic engine. no recorded video needed that takes up tons of space. in fact i still have the replay files in my backup drive!

I'd love another more like the first, though published by some other company.

I'm actually surprised there weren't more developers copying the style of that one. It's brilliance came from its relative simplicity while still doing a good job of giving the impression of realism. It wasn't really a complicated formula at all: three stances, three ROEs, waypoints, cover-arcs, and that's about it, but it worked so well.

By not trying to force too much plot, you actually got attached to your team members, not because of some artificial personality, but because of their effectiveness (I could always count on Chung to lay it down with the SAW when I was in a pinch, and it really pissed me off when he was killed because of one hasty decision I made).

Just a very simple, well thought out game when it camee down to it, but it worked so well. Update that old formula with some new graphics, bigger maps, more objective interaction, (and I wouldn't mind a little bit more action-game style to the individual soldier control), and you could have something pretty good. I imagine it wouldn't go over so well with the console crowd though.

Nvidia seems to have issues with fan control more often than they should. Up until a few versions ago (almost the entire 180 series as I recall) I couldn't use any of the newer ones because the fan would never slow back down again once it sped up, and I had other similar problems a few versions before that. All WHQL drivers, of course.

I suppose its nice that they're constantly updating their drivers with optimizations for new games, but sometimes they seem to be outpacing themselves.

I do usually use reference drivers though, and I don't update unless there is a specific reason to do so, so it would perhaps be wiser to use EVGA's board-specific releases in the future. Fans running too fast is one thing, but too slow is something else entirely.

It's good that Ubisoft responded to this. Since obviously it will be fully cracked sooner rather than later, there will be a lot of journalists asking them for comments about that when it happens and they've set the precedent of responding. Now they will likely have to publicly admit their DRM doesn't actually work, and it will give everyone that bought it something to think about when they inevitably have some sort of, at least minor, hassle with it.

I was very disappointed to hear you can't play the multi-player modes single-player with bots like you could in the earlier BF games.

On a good server with mature players, the Battlefield games were easily some of the best computer gaming I've ever experienced. On server with brats and idiots, there wasn't much point.

Playing alone with bots made up for this to a certain degree. In my opinion, BF2 with bots, while it hardly compared to a good server, was much better than the typical, disorganized public server. At least the general flow of the gameplay worked right, and it made for a fun shooting gallery. It's why I kept it installed for so long.

It seems as I get older I have less and less patience for the jerk-offs on the typical public servers, to the point now where I won't even subject myself to it, and I don't really have the time to go seeking out good matches/players anymore.

I can appreciate why they didn't, of course. Given the probable amount of work it would take, it wouldn't be worth it given how few people would actually be interested in it. I imagine that the people that play like twits on public servers just like to play it that way, and the serious people are willing to invest the time to sort themselves out (it really can be truly awesome with good players).

It's just a shame it's gone a step backward feature-wise in this sense. I'd pay for that as DLC in the future if they put real effort into it. It would give us co-op as well, which was also lots of fun, and you only need a handful of people to make that worthwhile (just two player BF2 coop with my roommate back when was a hell of a lot of fun).

In reality, I doubt this DRM would have any practical downsides for me. I am always connected to the internet, and it's been a long, long time since I've had any interruption in my service (though I have increasingly been playing games on my laptop). Though I want the option to be available, odds are that I won't actually want to re-install it and play again five years from now either. It's the principle for this one.

I'm sure the pirates will crack it in short order, they always do.

In this case though, that won't make much difference to me. In the past when there was DRM I didn't like, I'd just install one of the cracks to get around the annoyance, but in this this case I just won't be buying it at all.

That was the thing before. The DRM annoyed me, but not to the point where I would entirely forgo playing a game I was otherwise interested in. This one is just dropping off my radar entirely. I no longer have any interest in any previews, ads, screenshots, or anything. Just blotted out of my mind. When I'm walking down the aisle in the store, it will just be an obstacle on the shelf obstructing my view of the games I actually might buy. It's a shame, because it's a good series.

As usual, none of this will make a lick of difference to the people who pirate it though. I must admit that, if it is good, I will probably be tempted, but that would just be playing into their hands, and they'd think "Aha,see? We need even stronger copy protection."

I need to be connected to Ubisoft constantly to play Silent Hunter 5 single-player, and if my connection dies the game just stops mid-stride?

I don't usually do a lot of bitching about DRM stuff. I don't like it of course, and I think it's silly when they try to take it beyond just stopping casual copying, but I'm probably just too old or something to get all worked up about it. I wouldn't, for instance, bother to boycott a game because it has DRM I don't agree with.

Until now, of course.

Hopefully this isn't just me, and the rest of the people who were willing to be pushed so far will draw the line here.

edit: And yes, I know what you're going to say, that had I bothered to boycott stuff earlier maybe it wouldn't have come this far, and that it didn't take any leap of imagination to have seen this sort of DRM coming, but nevertheless here we are.

I would also point out that if they took the fact that you always have to be connected to their server and did something with it beyond just DRM that couldn't be done otherwise, then I wouldn't be so against it. I'm sure they could think of some interesting ways to add value to it given that the devs can now count on people always being connected to a central server (and not just social-networking, achievement crap). That would certainly change my opinion to a degree. Give and take. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's something.

I really want to buy it, I've bought every other one the day they came out (and for the most part had good enough luck), but this time I'm sitting on my hands until things are sorted. There are few things worse than playing a game, no matter how good it is, where there's always that nagging worry in the back of your head that it might crash at any moment.

It would be nice if they would upgrade the underlying engine a bit. It was improved somewhat with patching, but the performance is still to low given the quality of the graphics. It also just kind of has an overall clunky feeling that's hard to put my finger on, but pretty common in console ports.

Also, to join the inevitable forthcoming chorus, lose the damn Social Club thing. That is the most ridiculous piece of parasitic garbage I've ever seen attached to a video game. Worse that GFW. Speaking of GFW, lose that too.